


Here to Hold on To

by lady_ragnell



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: trope_bingo, F/F, Femslash February, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A chance meeting in the hospital the morning after Laura kills Peter leaves Laura with a telepathic connection to a teenager she'd never met before--one who, after she finds out about werewolves, wants the bite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here to Hold on To

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** minor character death, hospitals/illness (specifically Erica's epilepsy), mentions of bullying and miserable high school experience (also due to Erica's epilepsy, nothing more explicit than in canon), minor bloodplay towards the end. There's no sex, but Laura is very aware nonetheless of Erica's age.
> 
> Written for the "telepathy" square on my trope bingo card and also for Femslash February.
> 
> Title from "City," by Sara Bareilles.

The hospital waiting room is quiet on a weekday morning, and it gives Laura too much space to think. Too much space to smell, when the scent of antiseptic and anxiety only reminds her of the smell of smoke. It’s already in her nose just from being in Beacon Hills. She doesn’t want or need this reminder, not after last night.

When she can’t stand it anymore, Laura reaches for one of the magazines discarded on the table near her—last month’s _Cosmo_ , which still smells of strong chemical perfume that makes her nose wrinkle but at least covers up the scent of hospital. A girl sitting near her, all red-rimmed eyes and overwhelming tangles of blonde hair and sweatpants, looks up for the first time from her own magazine and gives her a brief smile. Laura can’t even pretend to twitch her mouth up in return.

Eventually, two nurses make it over to her, after talking to the deputy standing by the check-in desk, telling him what Laura already knows. One of them is from the long-term care facility, and the scent of Peter and fury on her is startling. The other has curly hair and an expression Laura chooses to call sympathy rather than pity, and she’s the one Laura turns to. “Is it him?”

“Yes. I’m very sorry for your loss.” She hesitates, like she knows how inadequate an answer that is. “Would you like to see him?”

If Laura sees him, all she’ll be able to think of is seeing him in the forest, turning around just barely in time. She’ll think of being forced to kill him or die herself, and how only the thought of leaving Derek alone and leaving Beacon Hills to the mercy of an alpha werewolf on a rampage kept her from giving in without thought. If she doesn’t see him, though … “I think so. Thank you. I know the way to the morgue.”

The nurse—her nametag says Melissa, and she smells a little like Laura’s mother used to—winces, but she doesn’t object. “Find me afterwards. We’ll go over his wishes for the end.” Laura already knows what she’s going to have to do with him, because Peter and his love for the darker, more hidden parts of their lore could mean he has contingency plans in place, and she won’t risk it. Still, she nods. She has to go through the motions.

Laura’s good at going through the motions.

*

When Laura was eighteen, she screamed and cried and shook, wolf and human sides out of control with grief and Alpha power. It’s a miracle she didn’t reveal their secret to everyone in town. Now, she can’t register much more than a deep-seated ache that isn’t even regret, just the emptiness of only having one family member left, only one beta, and that one far away. She’ll have to call Derek back to Beacon Hills and already wants not to have that conversation. Their territory is important, though, and she’s got to hold it, to keep the border secure. Peter was enough deterrent for the packs to the north and south to keep their enmity out of Hale territory, even incapacitated, but if there’s no one from the pack there Beacon Hills will find itself at the center of a border war. Laura has a duty, and she needs Derek there.

Dealing with the morgue is easy, even Peter’s body with the sheet pulled up to his chin to keep his wounds hidden. The sheriff’s department and the rangers are searching the woods for dangerous animals—wolves, mountain lions. The Sheriff, a man she remembers as a kind deputy who offered her black coffee after the fire, not the sugared-down concoctions everyone kept assuming she would want, assured her when they spoke that everything is being done to investigate how her uncle got out of the hospital without anyone seeing, especially when he’s been catatonic for six years.

Laura spends a few silent minutes with her uncle’s body, offering up her apologies (more for running from Beacon Hills and not being there to encourage his recovery than for killing him) and the few tears she didn’t cry after she staggered away from their fight and curled up in the backseat of her Camaro to heal. That done, she gives the hovering morgue attendant a nod and goes back out to the waiting room, away from the choking smell of preservatives and blood.

Melissa is on the phone in the corner when she gets back (“—lost your inhaler _again_? Tell me you and Stiles didn’t decide to take a detour to see the crime scene on your way to school”), so Laura settles back down in her seat from before.

The blonde girl is still there, leafing through the magazine Laura put down when she left, pausing for a few minutes on an article about _The Perfect Shade of Lipstick for You!_ She had both her parents with her earlier, but now there’s just her father, looking at e-mails on his phone with a scowl on his face. Laura looks around, more for something to do than because she’s really curious, and catches sight of the mother pacing around outside the entrance to the hospital, on her phone and shouting, gesticulating. Laura catches “—report you if you don’t _do something about this_ , my daughter has a right—” before she’s startled by the girl breaking her silence.

“Did you want the magazine back?”

Instead of pitying, she mostly sounds bored, like she hasn’t figured out who Laura is yet and just wants to be polite, and Laura appreciates that more than she’d like to admit. “No, thanks. Enjoy.” That leaves her at loose ends, though, and she speaks again before she can even think about it. “Would you mind passing me the _National Geographic_ over by you, though?”

“Sure.” The girl unfolds from her hunched-in, protective position and reaches out for the magazine, some special on Norway that only caught her eye because of Peter’s stories about Fenrir. Laura leans to meet her halfway and their fingers tangle as the magazine slips. There’s a sharp spark, a buzz in her ears, and then it’s like tuning into a radio: _hate this, hate it, why won’t Mom just—_

They both start back with enough force that the girl’s father looks up from his Blackberry. “Everything okay, Erica?”

_No no no_ says the voice in Laura’s head before it fuzzes back out, leaving only a vague sense of presence behind it. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just got a shock, that’s all.”

Laura clutches her magazine tight in her hands and turns away without acknowledging either of them even though she knows it’s rude, something like Derek would do on one of his worse days. That was her imagination, it had to be, if only because Laura can’t handle something else supernatural on top of losing Peter, having to kill Peter. Having to move back to Beacon Hills.

If it’s just her imagination, the girl—Erica—shouldn’t be acting strange too.

“Ms. Hale—Laura?” says Melissa, and Laura snaps her head up to look at her, hoping she doesn’t look as wild as she feels. Melissa’s face softens, so maybe she just looks like someone grieving should. “Sorry about that, my son was on the phone. Would you like to come with me?”

Laura stands fast enough that it startles all three of them and follows where Melissa beckons her. She doesn’t realize until she’s sitting down in some anonymous office that smells like air freshener instead of medicine that she’s still clutching the magazine in her hands, crumpled up, her knuckles white as she holds on.

*

Laura calls Derek the second she walks out the hospital doors. He must know something’s wrong already, so even though she doesn’t know what to say she knows she has to tell him. He picks up after two rings. “What’s wrong?”

It’s never “hello,” with Derek. Most often it’s “What?” but sometimes it’s like this, the too-even voice he learned when he was sixteen that he uses when he’s most worried. “It’s Peter,” she says, unlocking the Camaro and sliding into the driver’s seat, rubbing at a spot on the wheel that she thinks might be her own blood. “He attacked me last night.”

Derek breathes out, and only another wolf would hear the whine behind it. “Why?”

“I think …” She thinks of the Nancy Drew investigations she’s been doing, the pieces she’s been putting together on this visit. She thinks of the way Derek never talks about the fire if he can help it and how that’s going to have to change if he comes back. “Revenge,” she says finally. “He wanted revenge. And to get the kind he wanted, he would have had to be the Alpha.” And he was willing to kill her for it; the thought is like a knife in the ribs.

“No, not …”

Laura was never close to Peter, never any interests in common, but Derek loved him. This might be the worst part of it. “Revenge must have been the only anchor he had left to the world, and he finally got the strength to try for it.” And maybe her thoughtless talking about the investigating she’d done when she visited him helped him along too. “I’m sorry, Derek. It was him or me.”

She can tell he’s not alone, maybe shut in a bathroom on campus or something, but he still lets out a wounded noise that even humans could hear. “Laura, no.”

“I’m sorry.” She rests her head against the wheel, feels for something to anchor her—Peter was her anchor, before, because Derek was already everything she had left and she wasn’t stupid enough to rest her humanity on him too, because Peter was stuck human and it reminded her to be as well. Now she feels at sea, floundering until there’s a girl’s voice saying _no no what_ is _that I can’t be crazy as well as broken_ and she misses the first part of whatever Derek says next.

“—out, you can come back and I guess we’ll …”

“Not coming back, Derek,” she interrupts, hoping her voice isn’t as shaky as she thinks it must be. She’s back in control again, the guilt isn’t dragging her under, but feeling for her anchor shouldn’t lead her to a stranger’s voice in her head. “I can’t, not now that Peter’s dead. If we don’t hold Beacon Hills, the Alpha Pack is going to deal with it, and not in a way that we like. Or in a way that Mom and Dad would have wanted.”

“But.” Derek stops there, probably knowing that she doesn’t want to hear about her job, his last semester of school, the life they’re starting to carve out for themselves in New York.

“I’m going to stay. And I need you here.” He starts objecting, the human in him coming up with all the practical objections. “Stay through the semester, get your degree, I’ll fly out for graduation and pack up the apartment then. But I’ll need you eventually, while I figure out how to recruit.” In New York, out of her own territory, she didn’t feel the need for a bigger pack, but here she’ll need one, somehow, whether by recruiting the dissatisfied from other packs or by giving the Bite to a few people.

(The part of her that’s wolf instinct tells her to have children, as many as she can bear, but Laura is twenty-five and _not ready_ so it will have to be something else.)

“Okay.” That’s as firm as a wall slamming down. Derek will come, but they both know he’s not ready for everything Beacon Hills will bring up for him: the way he smells like gut-wrenching guilt whenever she dares to mention the fire, the easy life he was expecting to have at sixteen that they’ve had to rebuild brick by impossible brick, being the lead beta for a real pack, not just the facsimile of one they have in the city. “I’ve got to go,” he says after a few seconds of silence.

Laura checks the clock—almost three in New York, so she thinks he might actually have a class. “Yeah, go. I have some details to take care of. Love you.”

He hangs up without saying anything else, leaving Laura feeling bereft and _never let it go, I wish I could just—no, get out GET OUT_ says the voice in Laura’s head, and Laura screams, screams out the grief and the confusion and the pain and the future she keeps trying to build that keeps being torn down, screams until the only voice in her head is hers.

*

There are human things to do: insurance forms, death arrangements, contacting work and her landlord back in New York to tell them she won’t be back. Laura does them on autopilot and hates the familiarity of them, all the tricks of paperwork coming back to her six years on. She answers the Sheriff’s phone call and assures him she won’t sue anyone, isn’t pressing charges anywhere. There’s something wrong with Peter’s nurse, but Laura doesn’t think she has the energy for a lawsuit or for proving anything the human way.

There are wolf things as well, and Laura does the first of them that evening, driving to the veterinary clinic right when it should be closing. She doesn’t know exactly who Dr. Deaton was to her mother, but she knows that he’s the best resource she has right now for learning not just how to control the Alpha instinct (she did that years ago) but to use it to build a pack, as well as for the fuzzy connection in her head that comes in and out all afternoon, flashing panic and despair from the girl in short flashes Laura can’t contextualize.

When Dr. Deaton sees her, he gives her a nod and tells her to sit down while he talks to his assistant, a high school boy with curious brown eyes and a little hitch in his breathing. When he leaves, Laura waits a minute before she tries to say anything. “I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just the veterinarian, Miss Hale.”

Laura holds in her snarl but gives in the urge to stand up, to be on the same level with him. “If this is some kind of test, I don’t have the patience for it and it doesn’t reflect well on you. I remember that you knew my mother, you don’t get to pretend you don’t know anything. I’m here to pay my respects, not pump you for information.”

“Oh?”

“I know everything I need to know about my uncle’s death.” She knows less about the fire, but she knows the direction all her information is pointing in, and she’s not sure she’s ready to take the steps necessary from that, not if it would make her an enemy of the most powerful hunting family in North America. “While I’d like to consult on a few other things, if you don’t want to help, you can tell me so.”

“I never said that.”

Laura doesn’t remember much about Deaton and her mother, just that her mother usually went to meetings with him alone. She doesn’t know his agenda, his role, or even how her mother knew him. All she knows is that he knows things, useful things, and that even though Peter did research, even though they had a library full of useful books, Deaton is still the man her mother went to most often. That’s got to mean something. “So I can ask you for help if I need something?”

“I’ll always try my best for the Hales.”

She doesn’t trust that, because it’s nowhere close to the same as saying he’ll try his best for _her_ , but she suspects it’s the best she’s going to get. “If you don’t mind, I have a quick question now.” He nods, makes a go-on gesture. “Since this morning, I seem to be … hearing someone’s thoughts, on and off. Not constantly. I think she has the same thing happening. Most likely candidate is a girl I saw in the hospital waiting room, it started when she gave me a magazine. Would you know anything about that?”

“I’ll look into it.” That, she suspects, is all the answer she’ll get out of him. “I would recommend that in the meantime you talk to this girl, though.”

_Well maybe if you just talked to me instead of about me_ says the angry voice in her head, and it’s not directed at Laura but she gets the point anyway. “Is it dangerous?”

“It shouldn’t be.” Not the same thing as “no.”

“I’ll talk to her. Thank you for your help.” She pauses and debates the best way to keep mending fences with him. “I’ll be rebuilding the house, soon,” she says after a few seconds. “I’ll invite you for dinner when I can, if you’d like.”

“I’d like that very much, Laura, thank you.”

Laura nods and walks out, hops back in the Camaro and drives out to the one bed and breakfast she remembers from six years ago. It’s closed, some restaurant in its place, and she goes to the woods instead, and then to her old house, pitches the tent she has stuffed in the trunk of the car for this kind of thing.

Then she sits down to try to talk to the girl.

*

_Listen listen listen,_ she thinks as insistently as she can, not quite sure what makes the connection come in or out on either end. _Listen to me, are you there, can you hear me? I need to talk to you._

Sharp, insistent denial. More than the words, she gets the sense of them: _not real, not crazy._

Laura breathes in and out again. _Erica,_ she thinks, firm and coaxing. _Erica, listen, listen to me. You’re not crazy, this is real._ All that gets her is a long string of _godohgodohgodohgod_ no, but at least it’s the words this time. _You gave me a magazine earlier. I’m Laura. This is real. You need to listen._

The connection wavers, steadies. _Prove it,_ comes the careful thought, followed by a flood of unintentional communication, all desperate and hopeful and worried and medical terms Laura can barely translate.

_I’ll give you my phone number. Can you call it?_ Affirmation, nervousness, anxiety. Laura thinks through her number one careful digit at a time from area code to the very end. _Call it. When you figure out I’m real we can work through it from there._

Unintentional: _please don’t be a pizza place, please don’t be a joke, please be real._

Laura’s phone rings and she picks it up right away. “This is Laura. Erica?”

Erica lets out a long, shaky breath, relief/confusion/fear broadcasting across their connection. “Yeah, that’s me. You’re … from the waiting room?”

“Yes. I think this happened then.” _Whatever this is._

_You don’t know?_ “When we touched? I knew something happened. But this is … it’s like science fiction, how did it happen? Why can I hear you?”

_I wish I did. Might have something to do with—_ She blocks out words about werewolves and the supernatural but thinks some of it must leak through when Erica echoes fear back at her. “I don’t know. I think I need to tell you some things, if this is going to last. But you have to promise to keep them a secret.”

_Who would I tell?_ Laura isn’t meant to hear that, the little hint of bitter loneliness, almost a reminder of Derek without the guilt. “You’re not a murderer or something, are you?”

Laura can’t help the way her control slips, letting out memories of blood, of the way Peter looked like her uncle again at the end, of how cold and numb she’s felt all day. _No no, not like that_ she blurts at Erica’s instant revulsion and retreat. “No, Erica, listen to me, he was trying to kill me, I’ll tell you everything, just wait.”

“I should call the police.” Her voice is the thin thread of a whisper.

“Please.” She lays it bare, the desperation, the need to be listened to, doing her best to wake up from the level practicality she always falls back on when she can’t handle the world around her. “You said this sounds like science fiction, right?” _Listen, this is important, you’ll find this out sooner or later anyway if we can’t fix this, but you need to be calm._ “Me in your head?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not the only thing. Supernatural thing. I mean, part of this probably happened because I am.” Laura’s never had to tell anyone before, doesn’t know how to phrase it so it will be believed—but then again, Erica knows when she’s lying, right now. Laura rifles through her mental pictures of what she is as well as she can, picking the least objectionable images she can: _full-moon-wolves-howling-running-through-the-dark-forest-Derek’s-blue-eyes-Taylor-Lautner_. “Did you get that?”

Disbelief, anxiety. “No.”

_Full-moon-red-eyes-running-running-running-beta-form-Derek-at-my-back,_ a picture of her full moons as she experiences them now. She steers clear of the past, of the fire. “You can tell I’m not lying.”

Flashes from a hundred novels and movies. Laura’s starting to figure out how to listen to the connection now, to tune in to it properly and get what she needs to get from it without diving too deeply into Erica’s secrets. She doesn’t know what Erica is getting from her, but she hopes it’s reassurance, her need for this not to be what brings the Hale pack down. “Werewolf,” whispers Erica.

“Yes.”

Erica—Erica _wants_ to believe it, Laura notes with surprise. She wants it to be true, somehow, even through the haze of confusion-fear-curiosity. “I won’t tell,” she says at last. _Who would believe me?_

_Parents friends teachers, too much attention,_ Laura lets slip, only to get a bitter return of parents talking over her head, peers looking away, teachers leaving her to read in the back of class with pity in their eyes. “Okay,” says Laura out loud, and reaches out tentatively, feeling like she’s taking all of Erica’s secrets by accident without giving anything up in return. She thinks of being alone in Beacon Hills with all her family dead but her brother, of being too young for the responsibilities of being Alpha in such a highly-contested area.

Erica’s mental recoil is enough to snap the connection back to static again. “No,” she says out loud, and Laura doesn’t ask for her to explain. “Can you fix this?”

“I don’t know yet. Give me time. I’ve never run across anything like this before.” Her experience is narrow—she would have learned more, in time, but all she knows now is some about werewolves (and she knows there are huge gaps there as well) and a little bit about magical practitioners, mostly the one who gave Derek his tattoo two years ago. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Fix it,” Erica insists, voice shaky, and then she hangs up the phone.

Laura listens to the static but doesn’t try to break through it. Instead, she focuses on the white noise until it’s all she can think about and settles in to sleep, hoping that at least her connection to Erica will keep her from nightmares.

*

Laura wakes up early. Normally she likes to sleep in, when she doesn’t have something to get up for, but she’s not used to sleeping in tents anymore, and she has too much to do to indulge her urge to find a more comfortable position and stay asleep for a few more hours.

Her connection to Erica is still all white noise when she checks. She could be sleeping, or she could be blocking it, Laura isn’t sure which and decides to leave finding out for later. Her phone is silent too—no word from Derek, or any of her New York colleagues or acquaintances, or from the hospital, funeral home, or Sheriff’s office.

She takes advantage of the quiet to write out a list, everything from talking to the county to make sure her home isn’t being repossessed for being uninhabited for so long to asking Deaton if he has any ideas about her and Erica. That done, she goes for a short run, some attempt at patrolling the area around what will be her den, just to say she’s done it. Once, she catches a whiff of smoke, memory or just a breeze blowing woodsmoke to her nose, and she has to stop and breathe. Words break through the connection at that, a sharp _shut up_ from Erica that’s immediately replaced by static again. Laura isn’t used to being ordered around anymore, but she almost enjoys it, or at least enjoys having someone there to snap her out of it before she can let the past overwhelm her.

It’s ten before Laura hears from Erica again. She’s in the middle of a morning coffee after setting things in motion for a building permit on Hale property and getting the name of a good contractor out of the Sheriff when there’s a sudden, sickening swoop of anger-betrayal-hurt and then Erica’s voice saying _stop laughing STOP LAUGHING_ like it’s a well-worn litany.

Laura’s used to an Alpha’s connection with her betas, where she only gets the ghost of strong emotions, but this is overwhelming, like she’s right with Erica—sitting in her first period class, and they’re passing around a phone with a video of what happened yesterday, and Erica never wanted to set foot in this school again, she wanted to be done with it. Laura almost cracks her mug, she’s holding on so tight. _I don’t care what they did, they aren’t worth this,_ she sends, the instinctive kind of comfort she gives Derek on the days he doesn’t want to move from his bed.

_Not you too,_ thinks Erica, and then there’s static again.

Laura was going to find a temporary apartment next, buy a newspaper and look up some listings to tour, but instead she finishes her coffee in record time and heads back to the vet’s office.

*

“Ah, Miss Hale. Still having trouble?”

Laura looks around the waiting room, where there’s a woman concentrated entirely on her dog (panicking, in Laura’s presence) and another with a small boy toting around a puppy (a little intimidated, but more curious). “If you’re busy, I can come back. I just wondered if you’d had a chance to look over any of your books.”

“Come on in, I’ll tell you what I can.” Dr. Deaton looks around his waiting room. “I’ll be with Bucephalus in a moment, Monica. Thank you for your patience.”

Laura follows him into the back room, noting the way Deaton concentrates before he swings open the door to let her through, and the way she can’t help a shiver as she does. Mountain ash, she recognizes that from Derek’s tattoo artist. His office is clean, everything in place, and there’s no sign of him having anything at all to do with the supernatural. Most people Laura’s met seem to feel the need to broadcast it, but if Laura hadn’t already known about Deaton she wouldn’t have guessed. “You’ve figured something out, then?” she asks once she’s settled in a chair.

“Psychic connections—not just general telepathy, that’s more common, if almost always extremely temporary—are rare, and even rarer where werewolves are concerned because they already have the connection to their pack and their Alpha—or in your case, your beta.”

“I need to know what to do about it.” Laura still can’t hear Erica, but she can sense the misery behind the static.

He raises his eyebrows. “That, I don’t know yet. It’s rare that one forms spontaneously _anywhere_. Both of your needs for connection must have been great, for it to happen by accident, and whoever the girl is, she must have some power.”

Laura knows how much she needed the connection, needed something to anchor on to. She doesn’t know what Erica needed so badly that it sparked out and bound them up, but she was in the hospital, most likely as the patient from what Laura has picked up from her, and that is reason enough. “Is it permanent?”

“Maybe.”

That’s not comforting, but Laura doesn’t need him to be comforting; she needs him to be honest. “This happened against her will, and she doesn’t want it. What am I supposed to do about that?”

“I didn’t say I’m giving up on looking, Laura. Just that your situation is unprecedented as far as I’ve heard and I’ll have to continue doing research.” Dr. Deaton’s smile is veering close enough to smug that Laura wants to slap him. “In the mean time, I recommend you win this girl’s trust. You’ll both need it.”

It’s much easier said than done, but Laura doesn’t bother with that. She’ll do what she must.

*

Later, in the Camaro with the windows rolled up even though it’s a beautiful day, she calls Erica, about when she thinks school should be letting out—and God, that’s a jarring reminder that she’s bound to someone in _high school_ and that’s yet another reason why this is unacceptable.

Erica picks up quickly, and she doesn’t sound surprised, so she must have programmed Laura’s number into her phone. “What?”

The echo of Derek is startling enough that Laura almost laughs, but Erica wouldn’t appreciate that when she’s making such an effort to be brave. “I’ve been talking to a resource, though I would keep you updated. Do you have a minute?”

“Didn’t want to tell me in my head?”

The words are brittle and the static in Laura’s head fuzzes a little harder. “You don’t want me there, I’m trying to respect your wishes. For now, it looks like the best we can do is keep blocking it out. He’s doing research on how to break the connection permanently, but it isn’t how things are usually done.”

“There’s a usual way?” Sarcasm, but also curiosity.

“I don’t claim to be an expert.” Her connection with Derek is nothing close to that. “He did say it means you have some power, the potential to be a practitioner of some kind. I thought you might want to know that.”

Erica laughs, but it’s choked off and bitter. It echoes a little bit on her end of the line, and Laura wonders where she is but doesn’t ask. “So what, I’m Sabrina the Teenage Witch?”

Laura’s own laugh at that catches them both by surprise, lowering the barrier in their heads enough to pass a few snatched phrases that neither of them intends. “Maybe. I don’t want to out my resource, so I can’t tell you how to ask them directly, but if I find out more in the course of figuring this out, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

“I think we should meet for coffee, or something, do this face to face if we can,” Laura blurts before she even knows she’s thinking of it. “It might feel more grounding for both of us.”

All the tentative brashness leaves Erica in a rush, and if it weren’t for the white noise that means a barrier Laura would think she actually felt it go. “I don’t know if I can get anywhere.” She pauses. “I missed the bus, and I don’t want to call my parents yet.”

Laura doesn’t need to hear her heartbeat speed up to catch the lie on “missed the bus,” and doesn’t dwell on the horrifying thought that Erica might be even younger than she’d first assumed, fourteen or fifteen instead of sixteen or seventeen. “I’ll pick you up, I’ve got a car,” she offers. “If you don’t want your parents to find out or don’t want to see me, that’s fine. You probably don’t want a random twenty-something picking you up from school.”

“Yeah, but you’re hot, even when you look strung out like you did in the hospital yesterday,” Erica says, and a _shit_ slips past their makeshift barrier. Laura needs to figure out how to shore it up; how to want to. At least the thought of the hospital, of Peter and what she had to do to him, helps temporarily.

“Will your parents—”

“As long as I’m home when they get there it’s fine.” That’s a lie too, maybe, but not enough of one that Laura feels duty bound to tell her they can put off meeting.

“I’ll be at the school in ten, then. Wait out front?”

There’s a surge of _no they’re watching they’re waiting I can’t_ , but Laura is determined to listen to what Erica says out loud and not in her head. “Okay.”

*

Erica is waiting outside the school with her arms wrapped around herself and her backpack sitting next to her when Laura gets there. There’s a large space between her and all the other stragglers, all of whom are throwing her looks, some of them pitying and some of them cruel. More than a few of them seem to be whispering about her (“yeah, she’s the girl,” says one boy in a sports jersey with a sort of vicious satisfaction. “Did you see it?”), but she’s ignoring it as well as she can.

Laura enjoys the way people look at her when she gets out of the Camaro, much as she refuses to admit it most of the time (mostly when Derek raises his eyebrows). Instead of waiting in the car and waving Erica over to her, even calling her in their minds, Laura gets out of the car and listens to conversations stop and then start again on a different track. It doesn’t matter much to her that she’s pretty, but she knows it matters to other people. And it might, she realizes, matter to Erica, because a tiny smile appears on Erica’s face when Laura gestures her over, making it clear who she’s there for (and the whispers say “—have a sister?” “Dude, does Reyes have a _girlfriend_?”).

Because she feels like she owes Erica, in some odd way, even if the connection was mutual, Laura makes a point of opening the door for her and shutting it behind her, turning around to give her most friendly smile to the most incredulous jock, who seems to have forgotten about his redheaded girlfriend in the middle of the gaping. That done, she slides into the driver’s seat again and leaves the lot without doing more than give Erica a nod. She doesn’t want to be back on the high school campus, not where she has so many memories there.

“I want to learn to drive on a car like this,” Erica says, sounding like it’s something dreamy and out of reach. Well, the Camaro might be, but she doesn’t think that’s what Erica means.

“I learned on an ancient station wagon that didn’t have second gear, if that helps,” says Laura, driving towards the Preserve. They’ll be able to have some privacy there, and nobody will be able to tell Erica’s parents she drove away from school with a stranger. She hopes.

“I’d just like to learn at all.” And there’s a flash of _stupid, overprotective, I just want to be normal_ before Laura blocks it out. “What did you want to talk about? Mom gets home at four.”

It’s three now. “What to do about this. I’m moving back to Beacon Hills after some time away. For … there are werewolf reasons I don’t want to get into explaining right now.” She’ll have to tell eventually, or Erica will find out just because she thinks about it at the wrong time, but they have other things to discuss first. “But as long as we’re connected, and I’m here, I thought it would be best if we were in some kind of contact besides the phone. Maybe even find some way to be in contact in public so if either of us lets slip that we know each other it won’t be weird.” Not that Laura has anyone to let it slip to besides Derek (and she can’t stand the thought of telling him about Erica). She tightens her grip on the steering wheel. “A mentoring program or something?”

“Like mom and dad would let me. They make me go to school, but anything else is considered too much, like school is …” She trails off, mouth pressed into an angry line. Something huge and bitter is behind Erica’s tone, but Laura doesn’t know if she has the right to pry.

“We’ll think of something, if we have to. Hopefully we can figure this out. Do you want to hear more about what my resource said?” Erica nods, so Laura runs through what little Deaton was able to tell her. Erica doesn’t respond, just looks at the dashboard while Laura talks and finally pulls into a little private spot on the edge of the Preserve. “That’s all I know,” she says at the end, and she knows it isn’t much. “For now, all I can do is promise that I won’t pry into anything you don’t want me to, or that I’ll do my best.”

Erica is silent for a minute, almost two. Laura lets her have the time. “Anchors,” she says finally. “That’s a werewolf thing?”

Of course Erica has questions about what Laura is; she should have expected that, really. Under normal circumstances, Laura would tell her as little as possible, but with Erica in her head she may as well say most of it out loud and try to gain Erica’s trust instead of letting her find out what she’s lying about later. “Sometimes, during the full moon or when we’re upset, we need an extra reminder of our human selves, something or someone to think about that will bring us back. I needed an anchor badly the other day.”

Erica seems to take the one answer as permission and asks a barrage of questions about how many werewolves they are, if they turn into wolves, if there are vampires, what exactly being a werewolf is and means. The barrier is low, with her so distracted (and Laura is coming to understand that Erica may be controlling their connection more than Laura ever could—it’s when _Erica_ is upset that the white noise is at its highest, and when she is distracted that Laura can hear her. Laura doesn’t think she’s doing anything different at all), and Laura gets flashes of movies, books, a hundred little bits of culture that Erica seems familiar with, most of which Laura never made the time to read.

“—don’t get sick often,” she says at the end of a list of differences from humans that Erica asked her for, the turned-up senses and the instincts.

That, of everything, makes Erica’s attention _snap_ to her, away from her background analysis of fiction versus the truth. “What kind of sick?”

“Any kind of sick,” says Laura, a little puzzled. “Sometimes we get colds or things like that, but we’re resistant to them, and to most other human diseases, at least when our strength is high. I don’t know many bitten wolves, but they report things like asthma get cleared up, sometimes even more serious conditions. I don’t know much about it.” She’s known a few werewolves with medical degrees, but she never had interest in it herself.

A minute too late, Laura remembers meeting Erica in the hospital, how weary and closed-off she was and is, her parents, the fact that she can’t drive, a hundred other factors that should have made her wary of making life as a werewolf seem like some sort of idyll without illness. “What about something like epilepsy?” she asks, softly, but she’s looking at Laura with a sort of worrying determination.

“Maybe, but there are trade-offs. Problems. Hunters, and pack politics. Erica, being a werewolf, especially in the kind of situation I would be throwing you into, it could _kill you_. This isn’t _Twilight_ , where no one you’re supposed to like ever dies. I had to kill my uncle the other night. My whole family was killed because of what we are, even though we never hurt anyone. There’s so much risk.”

Erica throws open the connection and suddenly both of their heads are full of _humiliation seizures the video someone took that everyone’s seen the way her parents already tell her it’s okay not to go to college, she can stay as long as she wants, a longing for freedom control all the things she’s read about in books while no one would talk to her._ “You think this won’t kill me?” Erica asks when Laura figures out how to wrench herself back into her own head, the static coming back more comforting than she wants to admit. “We’re managing it, but sometime I could have a seizure at the wrong time, it’s a chance just like there’s a chance I could get killed for being a werewolf.”

Laura does the easy, cruel thing and does to Erica what Erica did to her: she opens up her mind and airs out all the worst parts of being a werewolf, the horrible decisions, the loneliness, the separation all through her life from her peers. She pulls out the loss of her family, the hunters she has to pretend to be polite to so they don’t write her off as an animal because that will always be their default assumption even if they pretend to follow the code. She pulls out Peter, and how he succumbed to the animal instincts. She pulls out lying to friends, losing jobs when she had to insist on taking full moons off, the instincts people never seem to understand. Erica doesn’t pull back, and Laura can _feel_ her listening, so she stops before it gets any more raw. “This isn’t easy either. You’re sixteen, Erica, you shouldn’t be making decisions like this.”

“You need a pack,” Erica argues, “and I already want it. You already know you need to bite some people, turn them, and I’m saying yes.”

Laura whips around to stare at her. “When did you find that out?”

“You think you’re the only one listening?” Erica raises her chin. “I want this, okay? Hunters or no hunters, whatever an Alpha Pack is, it’s better than what I’ve got now.” There’s a little hint of _revenge for being cruel, just wait until they see me and I’m strong_ in her head, the exact kind of thing that makes Laura want to steer clear of turning her.

“It’s almost four,” Laura says. It’s the coward’s way out. “Nothing is going to happen today, no matter what. We’ll talk more about it, really talk, but I’m not going to let you make a quick decision and I’m not going to make one either. This binds us for life.”

Erica waves her hand at her head. “You think we aren’t already?”

Laura can’t answer that; she just puts the car in gear and starts driving.

*

She calls Derek that night even though she’s been swearing to herself since their last call that she would let him come to her when he was ready to forgive her. Her conversation with Erica shook her more than she wants to admit, and she needs her brother, her beta. This is the longest they’ve been apart since the fire.

All he says when he picks up the phone is “Laura,” and she’s too tired to figure out his tone.

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” she tries. She knows the answer won’t be anything good, but she has to keep lines of communication open.

“Fine.” Derek’s version of “fine” is nightmares and the reek of guilt, but it has been for six years and she hasn’t found a way of lightening it since. “You?”

The question is grudging, but at least he’s asking. “Doing what I can. I’m looking for an apartment, and figuring some things out. I’ll be looking out for jobs soon.” Laura debates whether or not she should tell him about Erica for a few seconds—she wants to, but she doesn’t know if it will make him more or less upset, and she doesn’t want to risk making him worse than he already is when she can’t get to him. “I’ve run into a few snags,” she admits finally.

“What’s wrong?” He may be mad at her, but the question is immediate and she knows if she says she needs him he’ll be on a plane tomorrow. Derek may get upset with her just like she does with him, when they’re almost all each other has, but she’ll never question his loyalty, and the fact that he’ll help out however he can.

“It’s not an emergency,” she assures him. “Just a complication, and for me, not the pack. Not yet, at least.”

She explains the situation with Erica to him as succinctly as she can, along with the information she has from Dr. Deaton and what she’s extrapolated. At the end, she says Erica’s asked for the bite and waits to see how he reacts. “Do you want her in the pack?” he asks when she stops.

It’s not the last question she would have expected from him, but it’s far down the list. No one could ever accuse Derek of being good at emotions, even before the fire. “I don’t know,” she says, trying for honesty. “The telepathy is a complication either way, and she seems to think it will solve all of her problems. That makes me wary. And I was hoping that there would be enough time for you to meet anyone I was thinking about before I added them to the pack. I don’t want to make decisions without you, even if I am the Alpha.”

“Thanks.” Laura’s starting to be able to find his attempts at gruffness hilarious again, after a few years of her instincts telling her he was fighting her authority, or of the part of her that majored in psych for her first semester at school telling her that it was his way of hiding his emotions. (It was, of course, but he used the strategy long before the fire.) “Do you like her, though?” he continues after a second, sounding like it pains him to say it. “Complications aside, I mean.”

Laura blinks and makes sure the presence in the back of her head is focused elsewhere. For all she likes to claim she’s a better-adjusted person than Derek is, she hasn’t thought to ask herself that in the hours since she dropped Erica off at home. “Yes,” she says after a second of honest thought. “She’s …” She looks for the right word. “She’s strong,” she settles on. “Stubborn, maybe a little too angry, but she’s strong, and she’s smart, and she knows about werewolves and we’re living in each other’s heads but she isn’t afraid.”

There’s a long, long pause, the kind that with Derek only means she’s said something wrong, stepped on some mine she didn’t even know was there to be stepped on. “The telepathy,” he says finally when she can’t help a questioning noise. “Could she be hiding something from you?”

“It’s not impossible, but I think I would know if she was withholding information, and she doesn’t seem to be. What do you think she might be hiding?”

“I don’t know, anything. If Deaton says she has power, it could mean she’s been involved in this sort of thing before, or that her family is. You said she didn’t seem surprised by the existence of werewolves.” He breathes out shakily. “What if she’s a hunter, or if her family hunts?”

Laura thinks of the Argents, who have sometimes been the allies of werewolves but have never trusted them, and the investigation she left off after she killed Peter. She thinks about Derek’s distrust of humans. She tries not to think anymore, because she can only take so much, and while she knows there are things Derek has never told her about what happened around the fire, she doesn’t think she can know right now, not with everything else that’s going on. “I don’t think she is, Derek. I’ll ask her straight out, if you want, but I really don’t think she is. And I don’t think her parents are either. I think she’s just so desperate not to be who she is anymore that she’s willing to accept the existence of werewolves.”

“I’ll trust you.” It sounds like it pains him to say the words. “Just … be careful. Check in often.”

“I will, I promise. And I’ll keep you updated about my address and if I can find work.” They have plenty of money, but she doesn’t want to touch it if she can help it; rebuilding their home won’t be cheap. “I love you, Derek.”

“You too.”

He hangs up right afterwards, but it’s a start.

*

_I still want to be a werewolf._

The words come out of nowhere as Laura is looking at an apartment to rent at the edge of Beacon Hills—a nice building, with a nice old landlady who remembers the Hales kindly and offers a discount on the place, and with flower boxes on the windows that are the reason she’s thinking seriously about taking it. _Not now._ She doesn’t think she can carry on a conversation with Erica and Mrs. Baxter at the same time.

_You can’t ignore me forever._

_Not NOW_ , thinks Laura, as firmly as she can, putting Alpha power behind it that would have Derek whining if he were here.

Erica seems a little surprised too, and she’s more tentative when she tries again. _Soon?_

Laura sends back a vague affirmative and goes back to talking over details of the apartment. There are two bedrooms, so Derek will be able to stay with her when he finishes with school and she won’t have to spend unnecessary money trying to get the house fixed faster. It doesn’t feel like a real home, apartments never do, but it feels like more of one than she’s had for more than six years now, so she’s not going to complain. It’s only the second place she’s looked at, but before she leaves she tells Mrs. Baxter she’ll take it and will move in before the end of the week. She can tell Erica is eavesdropping as much as she can, but she doesn’t bother Laura anymore and after a while the connection goes back to static, maybe as Erica starts paying attention to class again.

That doesn’t mean Erica has given up, though, she discovers when her phone rings right as school lets out. “Will you pick me up again?”

Laura wants to say no, to avoid the conversation and just to be contrary, but she has a responsibility to Erica and no convenient excuse to put her off. “I’ll be there soon, unless I get stuck behind a bus. You can help me pick out a few necessities for my apartment.”

Once again, when Laura gets to the school, Erica is waiting on the steps. No one is even bothering to look at her until they notice Laura pulling up and going through the same routine they did the other day. Laura, angry on Erica’s behalf, angry for the way she accepts it, is _grateful_ for it since they aren’t laughing at her, glares around at everyone who dares look surprised that Erica is getting a ride home from school with someone besides her parents. “Thanks,” Erica mutters when she’s inside the car and buckled in.

“For the ride?”

“For—you know what for,” Erica says, mulish, and there’s a stray thought of _thinking I’m worth it_ that Laura pretends she didn’t hear.

“Sure.” Laura puts the Camaro in gear and starts driving over towards the next town, where there’s an antique shop she always loved as a kid that has some bigger pieces, furniture she can use for her apartment. Laura’s always liked old things, favoring rich woods and fussy fixtures that smell like their history, while Derek is fond of chrome and glass and the sleek modern look that she always tells him fondly make him look like a dick. They both, at least, know to pick solid pieces that will stand up to roughhousing werewolves, and that’s what Laura goes looking for when she and Erica go inside the shop.

“We need to talk about it,” says Erica a few minutes later, looking more bored than anything else while Laura eyes a lamp that looks pretty but smells like blood under the cleaning agent.

“So talk,” she says, a deliberate piece of bait. Even if she’s wary of giving Erica what she wants, she also likes the girl who stands up to her and is all anger and strength of will much more than the grim, defeated person she is after school, or dinner with her parents.

“You need a pack. I want it. You told me about the dangers, but you’re going to have to expose someone to them. Why not someone who has something to gain?”

It’s a good point, and one Laura has been thinking of in between all her objections. Still, though, she has to think about Erica’s best interests—she’s older, and she’s the Alpha, the one who knows everything and holds most of the cards. “Do you know all the ways this is going to change your life? Have you thought about anything but not being sick anymore and rubbing it in the faces of everyone you go to school with?” Erica flinches, and Laura switches to talking in her head; the man running the shop doesn’t seem to be listening, but Laura doesn’t want to risk it. _How are you going to explain to your parents and doctors that suddenly you don’t need your medication anymore, that any sign of your epilepsy just disappeared overnight? What will you do with new instincts? I’ve met newly bitten wolves, and things are confusing and hard for them for months. Years. Some of them never adjust._

Erica scowls. _So it’ll be a miracle. Dad’s religious. He’ll be thrilled._ She hesitates. _The doctor sometimes offers to get me into trials. Says I’m a good candidate. I could do one, pretend it’s a miracle cure. I don’t care if it skews their results._

“It’s not a bad idea,” Laura acknowledges out loud, moving on to the part of the store with the bigger furniture, bed frames and couches and chairs. There’s a big comfortable-looking one that reminds her of something her mother’s dad used to have. _What if you die?_

“Is that a possibility?” Her voice is high and, for the first time, scared. _Is it?_

_It’s not as common, but it is a possibility, with the bite. You’re young, you’re determined. That makes a difference._ She pauses, searches for the vague figures that get passed around their community. _Ten percent chance, maybe._

That seems to be the first thing to make Erica think twice, even though Laura told her about hunters, let her see the dangers of their life, the fact that she might die after she changes simply because of what she will be. _If I die because of hunters,_ Erica thinks—and oh, Laura didn’t realize Erica would hear her mull that over, _at least I’ll get to be strong first._

“I like this chair.” When Laura sits in it, the springs are a little rusty, but it’s a sturdy frame and well-maintained upholstery. It smells like it came from somewhere good, where people curled up on it with books on rainy days and spilled tea and cocoa on the arms and their dog got up whenever they were out of the house. _You’re strong already,_ she thinks. _Your parents may be protective, but you can find ways to live your own life. You must want things, and I’m willing to bet that being tied to a pack and what it needs from you wasn’t part of the picture a few days ago._

The images that fly through Erica’s head are almost too quick to catch: a college campus somewhere cold and crisp, travel, swimming in the ocean, friends, people admiring her, wanting her—she sticks on an image of herself, more confident, more put-together, wearing a red dress in some sort of club, someone’s hands roaming over her. Laura’s dimly surprised to note that they’re a woman’s hands, and pulls back before she’s tempted to linger. “I could still do that, right?” she asks, and her voice sounds loud in the little shop. She’s testing out a chaise lounge, enjoying stretching out on it like a character in a book.

“You could.” Some of it would be hard—easier if Laura had more betas, the traveling and going to college far away especially—but none of it is out of the realm of possibility, if things get settled here. If Argents don’t come back to wipe out the resurgence of the Hale pack. If.

_Argent,_ Erica thinks, and Laura snaps up to look at her. Her brows are knit together. _There’s an Allison Argent who just moved to town._

Laura only just keeps her wolf instincts under control, her claws in and eyes human. She thinks Erica can feel the loss of control anyway, judging by the way she looks at her wide-eyed. Laura keeps the Argents and what she suspects they did away from the surface of her thoughts. _That may make it even more dangerous to bite you,_ she warns instead. _I’ll need to talk to her parents._

“I like this chair,” says Erica. _I still want it._

“I like this one too.” She doesn’t know what she’ll do with a chaise lounge, but Erica is enjoying it so much and Laura wants to indulge her, suddenly, in what ways she can, as long as she keeps saying no. “I think I’ll buy them both. Now, we should get you home before your parents get home from work.”

She can feel Erica watching her the whole time she pays and arranges for delivery, but nothing comes across their connection.

*

The next day, Laura searches out the Argents. Mrs. Baxter, when Laura stops by the building to let her know there’s a small furniture delivery coming, is more than willing to babble about the other newcomers in town—Chris and Victoria and their daughter Allison, all very nice, from what she’s heard. Laura’s heard the name Chris Argent before and knows it comes attached to a good if harsh reputation, but then again, that’s what the Argents in general are famous for, and the Argents …

She goes to their home anyway, knocks on the front door during the school day. She doubts they want their daughter involved, young as she is.

Chris Argent opens the door with his eyes narrowed. She can smell gunpowder ground so deep into his skin he’ll never get it out. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Laura Hale.” She watches his face close down even more, can almost smell the disgust. “I just heard you and your family had come to town yesterday, and I wanted to introduce myself. You heard about the animal attack last week?”

“Yes.”

“It’s all taken care of.” She swallows. “My uncle had gone feral. He’s dead now.”

“Sorry for your loss.” It’s so dismissive, of her and of the history of her losses that he must know, that it can only be a deliberate attempt to get her hackles up. “Is there anything else you wanted?”

Laura lifts her chin; she knows she’s a young Alpha, but she refuses to be intimidated. She has to make this place safe for her, and for Derek, and for any other betas she may bring into her pack. “I’ll be building my pack. I’ll let you know the names of anyone I recruit, but only if I get a promise from you that you won’t do anything, won’t even talk to them, unless I ask you to intervene.” Before he can verbalize the displeasure on his face, she holds up a hand. The policy of any pack has always been to keep information about the structure of their lives out of the hands of hunters, but she doesn’t have that luxury now. “You can object, but if my pack isn’t strong, Beacon Hills is going to be in the middle of a territory war. I’m at least the devil you know, Mr. Argent, and my family has never given the bite to anyone who didn’t want it.” She tries a smile, hopes it looks as insincere and full of suppressed anger as she feels. “You don’t have the right to ask much of me, given what your family did.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“My family’s home didn’t burn down by accident.” She crosses her arms. “The chemistry teacher at the school drew a picture of a necklace, one a woman who was asking him some suspicious questions was wearing. It was the Argent seal.” His face doesn’t change, but his heart goes off rhythm. She nods. “Think about that, before you come after me or mine. If we’re monsters, we aren’t the only ones.”

Laura walks away and leaves him to think it over; she doesn’t think that’s the end of their interaction, but it’s a good start. She’s not going to roll over for the hunters, not when the Hale territory is so important.

_I’ll pick you up after school,_ she sends to Erica, and goes to make some calls about contractors to rebuild her house.

*

Laura isn’t completely sure how it happens, but Erica starts coming to her apartment most days after school, while Laura puts together something resembling a life in it. Her pots and pans, sheets and clothes and all the other little pieces of her life, are still with Derek in New York and will be for a few months yet—she’ll have to ask him to mail her a few boxes so she doesn’t have to buy a whole new wardrobe—but she makes the most of what she has.

Erica helps sometimes, but seems more interested in curling up on the chaise lounge with whatever book she has with her that day (Laura tried sitting in the chaise a few times, but every once in a while she catches the musty smell of sex, probably from a few owners, a few decades back, and it makes her flush more than it should). “I told my mom I’m doing some extra work for English so I won’t be home right after school,” Erica says after a few days of intermittent conversation about all the reasons she should and shouldn’t ask for the bite. “She asked with who, and I said you. So I hope you were good at English.”

She was—Laura’s good at most things that involve words, especially written ones as opposed to ones being said out loud. “It works,” she says. “I don’t have a degree in it or anything, but I got As in high school.”

Erica’s leg jiggles, a nervous gesture. “Good.”

“If the sophomore English teacher is still the same from when I was there, I’ll talk to her, let her know I’m giving you some tutoring so if your parents ask you’ll have an excuse.” It can’t hurt, and if it gets her a few more students to tutor, at least that’s some income while she tries to find full-time work.

Erica looks away. “Jack—someone asked me yesterday if the chick picking me up from school is my girlfriend or something.” Laura tunes into the connection, something that’s becoming frighteningly easy as the days go by, and gets a picture of one of the jocks from the steps that first day, one of the ones whose lust floated on the air, and his sneering tone as he asked Erica if Laura is her cousin, or some neighbor taking pity, or _oh no, my mistake, Reyes, maybe she’s your girlfriend_ in patent disbelief.

Erica doesn’t say out loud that her answer was _either way, you’re not her type_ and that he looked surprised, like maybe a mouse had talked back at him from a trap, but that little slip is what makes Laura smile. “I’m way too old for high school boys, no matter what they think. But people can think whatever they think about us. As long as I don’t get arrested I don’t care.” That’s not quite true, but it makes Erica smile, so she leaves it.

They don’t talk about werewolves much that afternoon, about the pack disputes and duties and history that Laura is slowly trying to teach Erica so she’ll go in with her eyes fully open, but when she drives Erica home, Erica pauses before she gets out of the car. “I still haven’t changed my mind,” she says, and leaves Laura to watch her walking to the door.

*

Erica only ever talks about her epilepsy through the connection.

She’ll touch on it when they’re talking, mostly the consequences of it—not being able to drive, protective parents, visits with more doctors because apparently a medication that had been keeping her steady for years has stopped working as well this past year or so and they’re still working on replacing it—but the few times she really talks about it, it’s always in Laura’s head.

_The doctor thinks he’s found something new, the insurance company is talking about whether it’s covered, it should be ready in a few weeks,_ she thinks one night. _If we’re going to do this, that’s the time._

Another time it’s _The day we met I’d had my worst grand mal since I was eleven, normally I don’t have to go to the hospital for them._

Laura listens, and does her best to take it all into consideration. The human members of her family got sick sometimes, but she never had to deal with serious illness (just death). It’s odd learning it from the inside out, all the little ways it makes Erica’s life harder than any teenagers should be, and when one night Erica, angry at someone at school for being cruel, flings the words _I don’t know why werewolves don’t give the bite to anyone who’s this sick, with whatever. You don’t have the right to keep a cure for any chronic illness to yourselves_ at her, she can see the justice in it, even if it’s not how the world works.

She has to be certain that Erica is going to get as much out of being a wolf as she’s going to lose; it’s even more urgent with Argent in town. He hasn’t contacted her, and she hasn’t contacted him again, but she knows he must be watching.

She also knows she’s getting closer to a decision, and hates herself a little for being willing to completely turn a teenage girl’s life upside down just the way hers was. Just the way Derek’s was.

(Derek calls every few days, and when he doesn’t she calls him, and neither of them mentions Peter. Laura talks about Erica mostly, how she reads comic books and apparently Laura is going to have to read a lot of Batman because if Derek and Erica both like it so much she’s going to have to give in eventually, but she talks about her apartment, what she wants him to mail her to fill it up, her search for a job that won’t drive her up the wall. He talks about classes and nothing else, and she hates knowing how small his life is with her gone. Once a week after she moves into the apartment he mails her a box of clothes and books and other small things of hers that she asks for.

She finds a housebuilding firm with an architect and a network of contractors that’s just shady enough not to ask too many questions about her stipulations for strength in the walls and a fortified basement and they start work on the house. Laura stays away from it, not sure she can bear to see the old one being taken down to the foundation, but it feels right to have the work started.)

Laura keeps reminding herself that Erica is only sixteen and that comes with a host of complications, but it’s hard to think that her age matters when Laura has her choking unhappiness in the back of her head and knows that even with the host of complications being a bitten wolf comes with, at least Erica will _feel_ stronger, which is what she wants more than anything else. But then again, maybe that’s selfish. Maybe it’s the Alpha speaking, reaching out for someone who already feels as though she belongs to Laura. Maybe it’s the worse part of her, the human part, being too susceptible to Erica’s smiles, her fire, everything that seems new and contradictory about her.

Her first full moon back in Beacon Hills, her connection to Erica was still new and uneven and Laura was still reeling so much from Peter that it hardly made a difference. The second one, she shifts and goes out into the woods, runs and runs and feels Erica in the back of her head, breathless and curious and delighted. She stays in beta form, so Erica can see what it will be like for her after she gets her wolf under control, and when she comes back in at dawn (Erica having drifted off to sleep hours before) she feels settled in her skin again, like she was starting to feel those last few months in New York, after years of clawing her way into something resembling normalcy.

Even if her decision is feeling more certain by the day, Laura takes her time with saying so. She wants both of them to be sure. She wants to see if Erica’s new drug works, gives her the confidence she needs. She wants to be sure that her first bite, her second beta, is the _right_ one.

Her decision gets made one evening, when she and Erica are idly chatting across the connection about Laura’s latest package from Derek and her plans to go out to New York for his graduation in a month. Erica’s presence feels fuzzy in her head, all of a sudden, and she says _oh shit Laura don’t listen DON’T_ but Laura doesn’t pull out fast enough to miss the way the connection goes briefly haywire, static coming in and out for a few seconds before taking over entirely, leaving Laura screaming Erica’s name inside her head and out loud both.

Mrs. Baxter knocks on the door while Laura is still panicking, wondering if she should drive across town to see what happened (she knows what happened). Laura hopes she doesn’t look as wild as she feels when she answers the door and apologizes straight off. “Sorry, I was napping and I guess I had a nightmare.”

That makes Mrs. Baxter fuss over her and offer her warm milk or cocoa. Laura, tense and waiting for Erica to come back, to reassure her she’s okay or will be, turns her down with a smile and says she’ll just turn on the tea kettle, Mrs. Baxter should get back to Jeopardy. Mrs. Baxter obviously doesn’t believe that she’ll be okay, but she leaves anyway, after exacting a promise that Laura will call her if she needs her.

It takes another five minutes for Erica to open their connection up again. _Sorry you had to hear that._ She sounds tense, miserable.

_I don’t care about that. Are you okay?_

_Fine, it wasn’t too long, I just had to reassure Mom and Dad afterwards. Now they’re arguing about whether the new drug really will help or if I’m old enough for any of the experimental surgeries._

Laura feels sick at the thought of losing Erica in any number of ways, from a seizure at the wrong time to an experimental treatment gone wrong. Somehow, without Laura’s permission, Erica has become the second most important person in her life, her anchor, part of her pack whether she’s a wolf or not. Humans in packs are in almost as much danger as the wolves, as the fire proved: if Laura gives her the bite, at least she’ll have means of protecting herself.

_You won’t need the surgeries,_ she tells Erica, and closes the connection before she can feel more than Erica’s startled delight.

*

The next day, she ignores everything she hears from Erica, questions and demands for promises and promises that she’ll be good, she’ll be so good, did Laura really mean it? Instead, she drives by the Argents’ house and leaves a note in their mailbox: _Erica Reyes. Do not contact her without my permission._

She calls Derek, and warns him that there’s going to be a second beta in their pack for the first time, and that if Erica is slow to get herself under control she may miss his graduation. He sounds a little worried, but more happy, and Laura is willing to go from there. She thinks, once they finish posturing, he and Erica will get along. No matter what, she wouldn’t turn Erica if she thought she and Derek would hate each other. She owes Derek more than that.

Her last errand is to go see Dr. Deaton. His office is quiet, nobody there but a few pets that have been dropped off. He smiles when he sees her. “Hello, Laura. I was wondering when I would see you again. I haven’t found anything about breaking an accidental telepathic connection yet, I’m afraid, or I would have contacted you.”

“I have a question about that, actually.” He must know that already, but Laura doesn’t mind stating the obvious once in a while. “Do you know what it would do to the connection if I gave the other person the bite? Would it make it stronger? End it?”

She thinks the way his hand comes up to cover his mouth is just a way for him to keep from smiling. “I have to say I’d considered the possibility. My best guess is that it would transmute into a stronger version of the kind of bond any Alpha would have with her betas. Less words and more emotions.”

It will be odd not to be able to have conversations with Erica in her head anymore, but probably better for them both. Still, a stronger version—that sounds uncomfortably like what her parents used to talk about, how a wolf could always feel a mate they chose a little stronger than the rest of the pack, Alphas especially. She cares about Erica, that’s not something she questions, and maybe even cares about her in that kind of way, but Erica is sixteen and Laura is twenty-five and there are too many complications. But then again, it is a _choice_ , she’s always been told that. If neither she nor Erica makes a move, their connection should fall into something more like what any Alpha and her beta would have. “It won’t hurt either of us, though? Take over, become impossible to turn off?”

“None of my sources have indicated anything like that. Bonds like this are usually temporary and unstable, and certainly not the natural state for either of you to be in. It seems reasonable that it would fall into something more natural given the opportunity.”

“Thank you for your input. Hopefully it works out that way.” She doesn’t know what she would do if it didn’t.

This time, he does smile, and she thinks it’s even an honest one. “I’ll be thinking of you both. Good luck, and give my best to your new beta.”

Laura stays to talk for a few more minutes, but when she gets out to the Camaro she opens up her side of the connection for the first time all day, letting Erica’s worry and hope flood into her. She waits a few seconds for her to calm, and then she speaks across the connection. _We’ll do it. Give it a few more weeks, so it could feasibly be the medication working, and then we’ll do it._

Erica doesn’t wheedle for it to happen sooner, or do anything else she expects. Instead, there’s a fervent _Thank you_ and then the white noise that means there’s something Erica doesn’t want to share with her.

*

For the next few weeks, it feels like Laura is holding her breath. She supervises some work on the house, which probably won’t be ready until spring. She spends afternoons with Erica, whose impatience is inescapable but who never asks Laura to move up her deadline. Mrs. Baxter smiles and shakes her head at them both and undoubtedly knows more than she lets on. Erica starts the medication and it does seem to help, or at least she seems a little steadier, which isn’t the same thing.

Laura flies out to New York for the full moon. She runs with Derek, has one last run that’s just the two of them (even if that isn’t quite true, because Erica is loud in her head the whole time, their connection not diminished by having most of the country between them). He’s quiet, but he’s always quiet, and when she leaves with a rented UHaul full of most of the contents of their apartment, since he’ll only be there another few weeks, he gives her a long hug. “I’m glad you’re happy,” he whispers. “Tell Erica I’m looking forward to meeting her.” Laura manages not to cry until she gets on the highway.

When she gets back to Beacon Hills, it’s about time to pick Erica up from school, so she parks the UHaul, gets the Camaro, and lets Erica know she’s coming.

Erica, to her surprise, runs down the school steps the second the Camaro comes in sight. It’s like a repeat of the first day Laura picked her up from school, with everyone staring in surprise and whispering, and Laura can’t help smiling as she gets out of the car and catches Erica into an easy hug instead of just opening the door for her. Erica wraps her arms around her and squeezes, a brief, embarrassed _I missed you_ in her head.

“You too,” Laura says out loud, and gives her a kiss on the cheek. “When will your parents be home?”

“Usual time.” Erica’s eyes widen. “Are we … this afternoon?”

Laura had meant to wait a few more days, give herself time to unpack, but with Erica staring her in the face and the thought of something a little closer to a real pack, it’s hard to remember why. It’s right after the full moon, so they’ll have almost a full month to work on Erica’s control, and … “This afternoon,” she says before she can really think it over.

Erica buries her face in Laura’s shoulder and laughs. Laura doesn’t know if she’s heard her really laugh before. _Let’s go, please, let’s go, we have to go,_ thinks Erica, and Laura opens the car door, smiles around at everyone watching before driving away.

*

There should be some sort of ritual about it. There might be one, even, but well-established packs don’t usually give the bite unless one of them falls in love with a human who turns out to want it, and that tends to be private between the Alpha, the wolf, and the human. Laura makes up her own ritual, instead.

She doesn’t light candles like she used to do with her cousins at sleepovers when they wanted to see if they could do magic like the stories their parents told. Instead, she gives Erica a glass of water and some time to collect herself, offers her shower if Erica wants it (she doesn’t, but she washes her face anyway, splashing it to cover up the deep breaths she’s taking), and starts setting things up. She locks the door and closes the blinds more out of necessity than any sense of intimacy—she doesn’t want Mrs. Baxter to walk by the window and see what’s going on. She lays rags on the chaise lounge thick enough that Erica won’t stain it when she bleeds, as she will before it heals (if it heals. Laura’s trying not to remember that there’s a small chance she may be finishing this day in jail).

“Sit down,” Laura says when Erica comes out of the bathroom, and tries not to seem nervous when she smiles. “Or lay down, whichever.”

Erica goes into her usual sprawl, but she never takes her eyes off Laura, and for the first time she smells like _prey_. “Where are you going to do it?”

“Somewhere your parents won’t see it. You’re going to have to go home before you’ve finished turning, barring an emergency.” The thought of Erica leaving before it’s done rankles, but she has to make allowances. Tomorrow will be time enough to get used to being pack in this way. Erica’s parents may loosen up eventually, when their daughter seems miraculously cured, but in the meantime if she doesn’t come home they’re well within their rights to be worried.

“Okay.” Erica lifts her shirt, bares her side. Her skin is smooth, and tanner than Laura is expecting considering she doesn’t seem to spend much time outside, much less sunbathing. The edge of her bra shows at the edge of the bared skin, red lace where Laura was expecting serviceable cotton. Laura smiles and feels a little more sure of what she’s doing: she doesn’t think anything could sum up Erica better.

Laura kneels by the chaise lounge, the smell of Erica’s excitement and apprehension mixing in with the waft of sex from the furniture itself and combining into something that makes Laura’s breath come a little quicker. “This will hurt,” she warns, around the fangs coming out in her mouth.

“Okay.”

There’s no reason to wait any longer, at least no reason that Laura can bring herself to keep thinking about anymore. She bends over Erica and bites into her side, tasting copper and electricity and everything else that makes up a human. Erica gasps before her hand comes crashing down on Laura’s head, fisting tight in her hair and holding her in place, pain and arousal peaking all at once.

When Laura pulls back, her mouth is wet with blood and her eyes reflect back red when she meets Erica’s. Erica, thoughts humming with excitement and fear and other things too fast to catch, reaches out with one finger and wipes a little of the mess off Laura’s lips, then licks up the taste of her own blood.

Neither of them wants to move, not quite talking through the connection but definitely not separated, and they stay there as the afternoon gets a little dimmer, until Laura knows they have to leave to get Erica home in time. She bandages her side, cleaning it carefully, and can’t help her wild grin when they see the edges are already healing.

They don’t close the connection all night, passing excitement and plans back and forth until one or both of them fall asleep some time around midnight.

*

Laura sleeps in and wakes up to something that feels like a smirk in her head. She recognizes the feeling as Erica’s, but even when she tries, calls out, she doesn’t get words, just smugness and joy and a hundred other emotions. Erica’s alive, and turned, and _happy_ , and Laura sends a wave of fierce reassurance and happiness the way she knows, like she’s done with Derek for years.

The feelings from Erica are stronger than those she gets from Derek, partly because of their proximity and partly, she’s willing to believe, because of the months they spent in each other’s heads.

She has to search the apartment for her phone before she finds it in the kitchen by the sink. There’s a message from Derek waiting, a terse _congratulations_ that must mean he’s felt the shift in the pack bond, but nothing else. Laura knows Erica has history this time of day, but she texts anyway. _Doing okay?_

The answer doesn’t come until lunch. _Amazing. Picking me up after school?_

_Of course._

That gives her hours to wait around. Laura’s impatient, partially the Alpha instincts needing to lay eyes on her new beta and partially just her wanting to make sure with her own eyes that Erica is doing well, taking to the change, but she gets a few things done, mostly phone calls about the house. There’s a scrap of paper in her mailbox ( _We’ll stay out of it until you give us reasons not to,_ says Argent, and she notices the “until” instead of an “unless” and crumples the paper up), and Laura thinks about doing something about it, but it’s probably wiser to wait.

When the time comes, she dresses with more care than usual to pick Erica up and pretends she’s doing no such thing. She doesn’t care about it, not for herself, but she knows that Erica does, and this is Erica’s day. The triumph hasn’t let up once in the back of Laura’s head today, and Laura is going to do everything she can to make it last. She’d rather rule her pack with happiness than anything else.

Erica’s on her own outside of school the way she always is, but Laura takes a second to recognize her anyway. Everyone is staring, not because something bad happened but because Erica hardly looks like the same person. She’s all tight jeans and red lipstick and hair pulled into a braid instead of left loose, topped off with a leather jacket that Laura recognizes from one of the boxes Derek shipped to her a few weeks ago.

She laughs and get out of the car like she always does, and lets Erica have her movie moment, strutting down the stairs while everyone watches and whispers (and Erica can hear them now, Laura knows that by the way Erica tosses her head and the pleasure in her head gets even better and a little vicious). Only another werewolf would see the way she wobbles a little on the heels on the last step, smell the relief when she makes it down without incident.

“How do I look?” Erica asks when she gets over to the Camaro, doing a little spin that’s probably more for the students’ benefit than Laura’s.

“Like a wolf,” Laura assures her. She can tell already that Erica is going to take to being a werewolf like a duck to water, and that she’s going to have her hands full trying to keep her out of trouble and from not outing them to the whole town. She doesn’t mind the complication, though, relishing the feeling of _pack_ that comes with having more than just her and Derek and Peter. “Good,” she adds when Erica doesn’t move, just keeps smiling at her, the part of her Laura only recognizes from being in her head finally coming through. “Want to go home?”

She only realizes she didn’t qualify that, didn’t say “to my house,” when Erica’s smile gets predatory and she steps away to open her own door, leaving Laura standing there. “Yes,” she says, and shuts the door.

Laura takes a few seconds to get to the other side of the car, hiding both her smile and her apprehension, not to mention the way her Alpha instincts and the rest of her are warring over feeling, just for a second, like Erica’s prey. When she gets in, Erica is beaming, staring down at her knees like she doesn’t want to chance anyone seeing her genuine happiness when she’s been walking around smirking all day.

There should be something big to say, the start of a deep conversation and a reminder about a hundred things they’ve talked about, even the immediate start of training (it was foolish enough to let Erica go to school today, even if she never felt a loss of control). Instead, Laura just smiles back, helplessly, so glad for happiness to temper her own grief and Derek’s. “Let’s go,” she says instead of anything else. “If you pay attention while we do a few things, maybe I’ll give you a driving lesson later.”

After so long knowing Erica’s thoughts, Laura knows enough to extrapolate the _thank you_ from the middle of everything else Erica is feeling. “Let’s go,” she agrees out loud, and Laura isn’t surprised to feel a hand come down over her own when she puts the car in gear.


End file.
